Gigli Vol.12 8.111101 [JW]: Classical CD Reviews- April 2006 MusicWeb-International

Gigli’s London recordings of 1946-47 are, frankly, an odd bunch. There are a few operatic arias, a lot of popular songs, some in English, and some Christmas pieties. The thing that struck me forcefully, though Alan Blyth is silent on the subject in his notes, is that some of these songs were geared to the John McCormack market. The Irish Count had recently died and HMV clearly saw this as an opportunity for the star tenor Gigli to reprise some of the songs associated with him. It really is extraordinary to hear Gigli in I’ll Walk Beside You, in which his timbre attempts – unsuccessfully – to mimic McCormack’s to such an extent that I’m convinced HMV sat him down with the Irishman’s recordings of this and Bless This House and asked him to pay due homage. He was certainly never less like Gigli and more like McCormack than in these sessions.

The commercialism of the project was undercut by Gigli’s very open English vowels and the uncomfortable nature of Dead Men’s Shoes repertoire – he may have been a congenial singer of popular song but no one – but no one – could sing these like McCormack and it was futile of HMV to make him, still less to mimic the Irishman’s brogue.

What else do we have in this mixed salad of a disc? Halevy’s La Juive, which Gigli never sang on stage. There’s heft here, certainly, but also honey. There’s a hint of constraint at the top of the range but fine sustenance at the bottom and an especially fine ending to the aria. His sotto voce illumines the Lalo but this operatic brace was followed by the popular songs in English to which I referred above. Fortunately over a week later he was back in Studio 1, Abbey Road and back with Cardillo – powerful and thoroughly manly – as well as Massenet, where there is delicacy as well as despair and where the mezza voce is subtly deployed. His Pourquoi me reveiller? is really rather overpoweringly Italianate but taken simply on these terms, impressive.

The Neapolitan songs are naturally meat and drink to him – the Falvo is exemplary – but one senses his relief at being allowed to essay Mascagni after a diet of Christmas songs in the 26 November session. I’m not sure how he viewed a running order, if one follows the matrices, of Adeste fideles, Silent Night and Ave Maria but the records were successful. Is Alan Blyth right in thinking that they were ready for the Christmas market? It seems like a quick turnaround.

There’s no escaping the uneven nature of these songs. Of all the Gigli volumes I’ve experienced thus far this is really the least important, but completists will need it and it has been excellent engineered and documented. Don’t blame Gigli too much for his recorded repertoire.

Jonathan Woolf

see also Review by Goran Försling

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